The BBC had to remove a news story after they attributed a quote to Will Ferrell, when it was posted on a “verified” parody account.
Elon Musk’s decision to allow anyone to purchase a “blue tick” on Twitter, which at one time confirmed the identity of famous people and companies, was always expected to cause a wave of fake accounts and lead to chaos. Now it seems it has happened as the BBC were caught out when sharing a story about Hollywood star Will Ferrell which turned out to have been posted by a parody account and not the real Will Ferrell.
According to Deadline, Spirited star Ferrell is currently in the UK on what has been dubbed a “soccer tour”, as he has been seen at a number of football games, chatting with the crowds and watching the action from the stands. On Tuesday night he attended the match between Queens Park Rangers and Sunderland. In usual Ferrell style, the comedy actor recorded a video prior to the game kicking off in which he told Sunderland fans, “the tears of sorrow you’re going to experience tonight dripping down your face into your mouth drowning you in sorrow, I can only imagine.” That was all well and good, but after the game the verified Twitter account @OfficialWillF shared a message to Sunderland AFC saying, “Haway man, sorry.”
This led to the BBC sharing the tweet in a story on their Tyne and Wear site under the headline of “QPR fan and actor Will Ferrell apologises for mocking Sunderland fans.” However, when it became apparent that the tweet was not the real Will Ferrell, but instead an account that had obtained a blue tick through Twitter’s premium Twitter Blue service, the BBC were forced to remove the article and issue their own apology for incorrectly publishing quotes that had been attributed to Ferrell.
Is Twitter Blue’s Availability Leading To A Rise In Fake Celebrity Accounts?
While this incident was pretty much a none story to start with and not one that was causing any harm, it highlights how easy it is for Twitter’s current openness to allowing anyone to gain themselves a verification tick can cause issues. Since Elon Musk introduced his Twitter Blue plan, which many argued would make verification checks on the site irrelevant, there has been a rise in accounts pretending to be celebrities or companies. Depending on the content shared, some of these are quite hard to pick out, which led to the BBC believing that the real Will Ferrell had shared the message they used in their article.
It does seem that despite the criticisms, Twitter Blue is here to stay as long as Musk is in charge of the site, and that could mean this isn’t the last case of mistaken identity on the platform. Since Musk took over Twitter, many celebrities have either abandoned the site entirely or have been posting a lot less in recent months and have chosen to move their social media output to other sites and apps.
While it doesn’t seem there has been any response from Ferrell about the story, it is unlikely that he has taken any issues with the case of mistaken identity while he was enjoying other matches in the UK, including one game at Wrexham, the club owned by his friend Ryan Reynolds.
